“9-1-1; what is your emergency?” When immediate assistance for life threatening injuries is required, it is customary to dial a centralized number. By dialing, the caller can be connected to an appropriate department or government agency including police and fire. These departments can then dispatch the appropriate emergency staff for the caller.
Nevertheless, and in some instances, urgent assistance can be required, but no particular number is provided that would allow the caller to receive the assistance they are looking for, for example, a certified CPR person. It can also be necessary to obtain urgent assistance from someone with a particular specialty or knowledge such as a scuba rescue team. Today, no mechanism exists for providing centralized services for dispatch for these kinds of services.
In addition, and is more often the case, urgent assistance is not required, but still no centralized service is provided. There are situations that simply involve a request for assistance from someone available nearby. Often times, where there is no centralized dispatch capability, it is necessary to consult the phone book or similar directory service to obtain the telephone number of someone who is based in the area.
With the explosive growth of the Internet, directory services became available over the World Wide Web. To find a provider, the user could simply type in their postal code and within seconds, locate the nearest provider. However, this method was limited to the person knowing their location. Furthermore, this relied heavily on the use of a computer that was immobile.
Another issue that arose from such systems was that providers who did not want to be known were still being repeatedly called. This often resulted in numerous complaints to such operators of the systems. A need therefore exists for a system, apparatus and method that provides dial by specialty with management functions while overcoming the above-described limitations.